


AO3 Census: Work Preferences

by centreoftheselights



Series: AO3 Census 2013 [5]
Category: No Fandom
Genre: Archived From Tumblr, Archived From centrumlumina Tumblr, Fandom Statistics, Fanfiction Genres, Fanfiction Ratings, Femslash Fandom, Gen Fandom, Het Fandom, Meta Essay, Nonfiction, Popular Fandoms, Research, Slash Fandom, statistics, survey
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-03
Updated: 2013-10-03
Packaged: 2019-09-18 05:06:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 2,250
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16988592
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/centreoftheselights/pseuds/centreoftheselights
Summary: This is part of the AO3 Census project, a survey that asked over 10,000 AO3 users about their demographics and habits.An overview of the 'Work Preferences' section of the survey.





	1. Ratings

N.B. The above percentages refer to % of total responses to this question, and sum to 100%. Percentages shown below refer to the % of total survey participants unless otherwise specified.

**Question 1**

This question was phrased as “What rating(s) of work do you prefer to read?” and was accompanied by the instruction “Check all which apply.”

**Responses 1**

The responses were selected with the following frequencies:

  * **General Audiences** \- 5974 respondents. 59.7%
  * **Teen and Up Audiences** \- 7365 respondents. 73.6%
  * **Mature** \- 8982 respondents. 89.8%
  * **Explicit** \- 8777 respondents. 87.7%
  * **Not Rated** \- 4260 respondents. 42.6%



55 respondents (0.5%) did not respond to this question.

There were 35358 boxes checked in total, or an average of 3.55 per respondent, with a standard deviation of 1.37. The median number of responses was 4, while the mode was 5, which was selected by 3697 of the respondents (37.2%).

822 respondents selected only one box, with the following breakdown:

  * 33 selected General Audiences (4.0%)
  * 85 selected Teen and Up Audiences (10.3%)
  * 167 selected Mature (20.3%)
  * 508 selected Explicit (61.8%)
  * 29 selected Not Rated (3.5%)



**Question 2**

This question was phrased as “What rating(s) of work do you typically produce?” and was accompanied by the instruction “Check all which apply. If you do not archive your works on AO3, skip this question.”

**Responses 2**

The responses were selected with the following frequencies:

  * **General Audiences** \- 2162 respondents. 21.6%
  * **Teen and Up Audiences** \- 3492 respondents. 34.9%
  * **Mature** \- 2911 respondents. 29.1%
  * **Explicit** \- 2121 respondents. 21.2%
  * **Not Rated** \- 373 respondents. 3.7%



4876 respondents (48.7%) did not respond to this question.

A total of 11,059 boxes were checked in total, or an average of 2.16 per respondent with a standard deviation of 1.01. The median and mode number of responses was 2, which was selected by 2085 of the respondents (40.7%).

1460 respondents selected only one box, with the following breakdown:

  * 227 selected General Audiences (19.0%)
  * 578 selected Teen and Up Audiences (39.6%)
  * 248 selected Mature (17.0%)
  * 280 selected Explicit (19.2%)
  * 77 selected Not Rated (5.3%)



**Ratios**

The ratio of respondents to these questions should correspond loosely to the level of demand for that rating, i.e. the number of readers per writer. Over all, the ratio of respondents was 1.94, while the ratio of responses was 3.20.

  * General Audiences - 2.76
  * Teen and Up Audiences - 2.11
  * Mature - 3.09
  * Explicit - 4.14
  * Not Rated - 11.42



**Limitations**

This question relies upon the respondents answering accurately, and their preferences may not reflect actual behaviour.


	2. Categories

N.B. The above percentages refer to % of total responses to this question, and sum to 100%. Percentages shown below refer to the % of total survey participants unless otherwise specified.

**Question 1**

This question was phrased as “What category(s) of work do you prefer to read?” and accompanied by the instructions “Check all which apply.”

**Responses 1**

The responses were selected with the following frequencies:

  * **F/F** \- 4413 respondents. 44.1%
  * **F/M** \- 5073 respondents. 50.7%
  * **Gen** \- 4946 respondents. 49.4%
  * **M/M** \- 8978 respondents. 89.7%
  * **Multi** \- 4348 respondents. 43.5%
  * **Other** \- 1572 respondents. 15.7%



N.B. ‘Other’ here refers to the name of an AO3 category. No write-in responses were permitted.

61 respondents (0.6%) did not respond to this question.

A total of 29,330 responses were given, or an average of 2.95 per response with a standard deviation of 1.61. The median number of responses was 3, and the mode was 1, which was selected by 2406 of the respondents (24.2%)

The 2406 people who selected a single response were broken down as follows:

  * 98 selected F/F (4.1%)
  * 162 selected F/M (6.7%)
  * 81 selected Gen (3.4%)
  * 2003 selected M/M (83.3%)
  * 57 selected Multi (2.4%)
  * 5 selected Other (0.2%)



**Question 2**

This question was worded as “What category(s) of work do you typically produce?” and was accompanied by the instructions “Check all which apply. If you do not archive your works on AO3, skip this question.”

**Responses 2**

The responses were selected with the following frequencies:

  * **F/F** \- 1043 respondents. 10.4%
  * **F/M** \- 1979 respondents. 19.8%
  * **Gen** \- 2431 respondents. 24.3%
  * **M/M** \- 4013 respondents. 40.1%
  * **Multi** \- 987 respondents. 9.9%
  * **Other** \- 293 respondents. 2.9%



4866 respondents (48.6%) did not respond to this question.

There were a total of 10,746 boxes checked, or an average of 2.09 per response with a standard deviation of 1.16. The median number of responses was 2 and the mode was 1, selected by 1974 respondents (38.4%).

Of the 1974 people who selected a single response:

  * 72 selected F/F (3.6%)
  * 201 selected F/M (10.2%)
  * 308 selected Gen (15.6%)
  * 1342 selected M/M (68.0%)
  * 23 selected Multi (1.2%)
  * 28 selected Other (1.4%)



**Ratios**

The ratio of readers to writers should correspond roughly to level of demand for works of that category. Between these two questions, the total ratio of respondents was 1.94 and the ratio of responses was 2.73.

  * F/F - 4.23
  * F/M - 2.56
  * Gen - 2.03
  * M/M - 2.24
  * Multi - 4.41
  * Other - 5.37



**Limitations**

The responses given for this question were self-reported and do not necessarily reflect the respondent’s usual behaviour.

For comparison purposes, the proprotion of total AO3 works in each category is as follows:

  * F/F - 5.0%
  * F/M - 22.1%
  * Gen - 26.4%
  * M/M - 49.9%
  * Multi - 4.1%
  * Other - 1.8%



[Taken from [this post](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16911123/chapters/39731292).]


	3. Genres

N.B. The above percentages refer to % of total responses to this question, and sum to 100%. Percentages shown below refer to the % of total survey participants unless otherwise specified.

**Question**

This question was phrased as “What genre(s) do you prefer to read or produce works for?” and was accompanied by the instruction “Check all which apply.”

**Responses**

The responses were selected with the following frequencies:

  * **Angst** \- 6747 respondents. 67.4%
  * **Fluff** \- 7380 respondents. 73.8%
  * **Smut** \- 7359 respondents. 73.6%
  * **Humour** \- 6320 respondents. 63.2%
  * **Romance** \- 7879 respondents. 78.8%
  * **Action** \- 4667 respondents. 46.6%
  * **Horror** \- 1794 respondents. 17.9%
  * **Original works** \- 1131 respondents. 11.3%
  * **Canon-based** \- 6420 respondents. 64.2%
  * **Alternate Universe** \- 8093 respondents. 80.9%
  * **Longfic** \- 7057 respondents. 70.5%
  * **Shortfic/drabbles** \- 4286 respondents. 42.8%
  * **Other: Textbox** \- 357 respondents. 3.6%



82 respondents (0.8%) did not respond to this question.

The mean number of responses was 7.00 with a standard deviation of 2.38 responses. Both the median and the mode number of responses was 7, which was selected by 1510 of the respondents (15.2%). The maximum number of responses given by a single respondent was 13.

2705 respondents selected five or fewer responses, accounting for a total of 10,874 responses. Among these 2705 people:

  * 1273 selected Angst (47.1%)
  * 1251 selected Fluff (46.2%)
  * 1408 selected Smut (52.1%)
  * 875 selected Humour (32.3%)
  * 1446 selected Romance (53.5%)
  * 481 selected Action (17.8%)
  * 152 selected Horror (5.6%)
  * 75 selected Original works (2.8%)
  * 903 selected Canon-based (33.4%)
  * 1522 selected Alternate Universe (56.3%)
  * 957 selected Longfic (35.4%)
  * 447 selected Shortfic/drabbles (16.5%)
  * 84 selected Other (3.1%)



**Other**

The following trends appeared in more than 5 of the 357 write-in responses:

  * Hurt/Comfort or Whump (105 responses)
  * Crossover (40 responses)
  * All/Everything/Anything (32 responses)
  * Drama (15 responses)
  * Crack (14 responses)
  * Mystery (11 responses)
  * Character study (11 responses)
  * Casefic (9 responses)
  * Fanart (9 responses)
  * Dark fic (7 responses)
  * Kink or BDSM (7 responses)
  * Friendship (7 responses)
  * Podfic (6 responses)



**Limitations**

This question shows the respondents’ perceptions of their own preferences, but may not necessarily reflect their actual behaviour. The write-in responses will be severely under-represented as users were not prompted to remember them.


	4. Popular Fandoms

N.B. The above percentages refer to % of total responses to this question, and sum to 100%. Percentages shown below refer to the % of total survey participants unless otherwise specified.

**Question**

This question was phrased as “Do you regularly read and/or produce works for any of the following popular fandoms?” and was accompanied by the note “Check all which apply. (N.B. These are the 25 fandoms with most works, after correcting to remove duplicates.)”

The option for One Direction (Band) was misspelled as Once Direction (Band). After this error was noticed, a note was added reading “ETA: There’s a typo in ‘One Direction’ but I spotted it too late to fix it.” This error was unnoted approximately 4000 respondents.

Responses

The responses were selected with the following frequencies:

  * **Actor RPF** \- 1329 respondents. 13.3%
  * **Buffy the Vampire Slayer** \- 833 respondents. 8.3%
  * **DCU (Comics)** \- 652 respondents. 6.5%
  * **Doctor Who** \- 1815 respondents. 18.1%
  * **Dragon Age** \- 414 respondents. 4.1%
  * **Glee** \- 832 respondents. 8.3%
  * **Harry Potter** \- 3304 respondents. 33.0%
  * **Homestuck** \- 607 respondents. 6.1%
  * **Marvel Cinematic Universe** \- 3976 respondents. 39.7%
  * **Marvel (Comics)** \- 1791 respondents. 17.9%
  * **Merlin (TV)** \- 2152 respondents. 21.5%
  * **One Direction (Band)** \- 443 respondents. 4.4%
  * **Rock Music RPF** \- 244 respondents. 2.4%
  * **Sherlock (TV)** \- 4098 respondents. 41.0%
  * **Smallville** \- 291 respondents. 2.9%
  * **Sports RPF** \- 399 respondents. 4.0%
  * **Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)** \- 2128 respondents. 21.3%
  * **Stargate Atlantis** \- 805 respondents. 8.0%
  * **Stargate SG-1** \- 504 respondents. 5.0%
  * **Supernatural** \- 3604 respondents. 36.0%
  * **Teen Wolf (TV)** \- 3741 respondents. 37.4%
  * **The Sentinel** \- 301 respondents. 3.0%
  * **Tolkien, J.R.R.** \- 1192 respondents. 11.9%
  * **Torchwood** \- 819 respondents. 8.2%
  * **X-Men (Movieverse)** \- 1391 respondents. 13.9%



The slight discrepancies in the last few values are due to errors in processing long strings of responses, which has caused the final fandom(s) to be cut off for some respondents. This was corrected in most cases, but continues to affect fewer than 10 data points.

542 respondents (5.4%) did not respond to this question.

The mean number of responses given was 3.98, with a standard deviation of 2.88. The median number of responses was 3, and the mode 1, which was selected by 1897 of the respondents (20.0%). The maximum number of responses given by a single respondent was 21.

A total of 5099 respondents gave three or fewer responses, accounting for a total of 9815 boxes checked. Of those 5099 people:

  * 385 selected Actor RPF (7.6%)
  * 151 selected Buffy the Vampire Slayer (3.0%)
  * 126 selected DCU (Comics) (2.5%)
  * 362 selected Doctor Who (7.1%)
  * 176 selected Dragon Age (3.5%)
  * 319 selected Glee (6.3%)
  * 834 selected Harry Potter (16.4%)
  * 315 selected Homestuck (6.2%)
  * 1073 selected Marvel Cinematic Universe (21.0%)
  * 379 selected Marvel (Comics) (7.4%)
  * 442 selected Merlin (TV) (8.7%)
  * 159 selected One Direction (Band) (3.1%)
  * 45 selected Rock Music RPF (0.9%)
  * 1418 selected Sherlock (TV) (27.8%)
  * 15 selected Smallville (0.3%)
  * 132 selected Sports RPF (2.6%)
  * 372 selected Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies) (7.3%)
  * 82 selected Stargate Atlantis (1.6%)
  * 40 selected Stargate SG-1 (0.8%)
  * 1172 selected Supernatural (23.0%)
  * 1309 selected Teen Wolf (TV) (25.7%)
  * 12 selected The Sentinel (0.2%)
  * 233 selected Tolkien, J.R.R. (4.6%)
  * 75 selected Torchwood (1.5%)
  * 189 selected X-Men (Movieverse) (3.7%)



**Comparison**

For comparison purposes, it has been suggested the list of fandoms may be similar to [these lists of fandom popularities over different time periods](http://centrumlumina.tumblr.com/post/62324192222/recent-fandom-popularities).


	5. Other Fandoms

The above word cloud was generated by removing all spaces between answers, replacing commas with spaces, and placing the results into the wordcloud generator.

Alternate wordcloud with WelcomeToNightVale shortened to WTNV for compactness.

**Question**

This question was phrased as “What other fandoms do you regularly read and/or produce works for?” After approximately 4000 responses, I added the instruction “Please separate fandoms with commas.”

**Responses**

5158 respondents (51.6%) answered this question.

This data has not been analysed completely due to the large volume of freeform data, so the frequencies below may not completely represent the number of answers given.

The following 50 fandoms were mentioned most frequently in the responses to this question:

  1. Welcome To Night Vale - 663 mentions
  2. Pacific Rim - 451 mentions
  3. Inception - 433 mentions
  4. Les Miserables - 368 mentions
  5. Star Trek - 355 mentions
  6. Hannibal - 338 mentions
  7. James Bond - 233 mentions
  8. Suits - 214 mentions
  9. Game Of Thrones - 193 mentions
  10. Elementary - 189 mentions
  11. Free! - 189 mentions
  12. The Original Series (Star Trek) - 167 mentions
  13. Mass Effect - 164 mentions
  14. A Song of Ice and Fire - 160 mentions
  15. Skyfall - 154 mentions
  16. Hawaii Five-0 - 153 mentions
  17. Attack On Titan - 153 mentions
  18. Shingeki No Kyojin - 152 mentions
  19. Once Upon A Time - 142 mentions
  20. Cabin Pressure - 136 mentions
  21. Criminal Minds - 128 mentions
  22. White Collar - 128 mentions
  23. Final Fantasy - 120 mentions
  24. Naruto - 119 mentions
  25. Avatar - 118 mentions
  26. Firefly - 117 mentions
  27. The Hunger Games - 108 mentions
  28. The Last Airbender (Avatar) - 102 mentions
  29. NCIS - 101 mentions
  30. Fullmetal Alchemist - 100 mentions
  31. Person of Interest - 92 mentions
  32. Sherlock Holmes - 92 mentions
  33. Community - 88 mentions
  34. Avengers - 87 mentions
  35. Good Omens - 86 mentions
  36. Rise of the Guardians - 82 mentions
  37. Hetalia - 81 mentions
  38. Generation Kill - 78 mentions
  39. Hockey RPF - 77 mentions
  40. The Social Network - 76 mentions
  41. Star Wars - 75 mentions
  42. The X-Files - 75 mentions
  43. Due South - 74 mentions
  44. Leverage - 68 mentions
  45. Dangan Ronpa - 68 mentions
  46. Lizzie Bennet Diaries - 68 mentions
  47. Bandom - 65 mentions
  48. Sleepy Hollow - 62 mentions
  49. Warehouse 13 - 60 mentions
  50. Kingdom Hearts - 59 mentions




End file.
